Sheriff's deputies have arrested a 30-year-old man who will be charged with capital murder in connection with the fatal shooting of a deputy at a suburban Houston gas station.
Shannon Miles was picked up for questioning early on Saturday following the Friday night shooting, which was captured on surveillance video, Harris County sheriff Ron Hickman told reporters.
He said that Mr Miles has a history of prior arrests for trespassing and resisting arrest.
Earlier on Saturday, the sheriff had linked the shooting of deputy Darren Goforth, who is white, to anti-police rhetoric across the country in the wake of a number of deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white officers.
On announcing the charges against Mr Miles, the sheriff said the department assumed Goforth was “a target because he wore a uniform”.
“We have not been able to extract any details regarding a motive at this point,” the sheriff said.
“As far as we know, deputy Goforth had no previous contact with the suspect, and it appears to be clearly unprovoked.”
Sheriff Hickman said a handgun had been recovered and that a ballistics test matched it to bullets recovered from the scene.
Goforth, a 10-year veteran of the force, was pumping gas into his patrol car when the gunman approached from behind and shot him in the back, then shot him again as he lay on the ground, police officials said.
Witnesses saw the gunman in a red pick-up truck, and investigators used vehicle records to track down Mr Miles, who lived near the gas station, the sheriff said.
New York attack
The fatal shooting in a suburb of Houston comes eight months after two New York police officers were ambushed and fatally shot in Brooklyn by a gunman who said that he wanted to avenge the deaths of black men during confrontations with police.
New York police commissioner William Bratton said at the time of the shooting, which followed large-scale protests over deaths of black Americans at the hands of officers, that police were unfairly subjected to public anger.
Sheriff Hickman was blunt in his defence of law enforcement in the midst of protests against police by movements such as Black Lives Matter, which has campaigned against police violence and the mass incarceration of blacks.
“We’ve heard black lives matter; all lives matter. Well, cops’ lives matter too,” the sheriff said.
“Our system of justice absolutely requires a law enforcement presence to protect our communities, so at any point where the rhetoric ramps up to the point where [the] calculated cold-blooded assassination of police officers happens, this rhetoric has gotten out of control.”
Harris County district attorney Devon Anderson on Saturday called on the country’s “silent majority” to support law enforcement.
“There are a few bad apples in every profession. That does not mean there should be open warfare declared on law enforcement,” Mr Anderson said.
Some commentators on social media objected to the sheriff’s statements.
“It is sad that some have chosen to politicise this tragedy by falsely attributing the officer’s death to a movement seeking to end violence,” civil rights activist DeRay McKesson said in a message on Twitter.
So far this year, there have been 24 firearms-related deaths of law enforcement officers, compared with 30 during the same period in 2014, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
It was not immediately clear when Mr Miles would appear in court for an arraignment.
Reuters